Bernie Sanders Forges Ahead With Jabs at Donald Trump

Senator Bernie Sanders at a campaign rally on Friday in Salt Lake City. CreditKim Raff for The New York Times

Undeterred by questions of delegate math or political momentum, Senator Bernie Sanders brushed off suggestions on Friday that his campaign had no way forward and forcefully made the case that he was the Democratic candidate better suited to defeat Donald J. Trump in a general election.

Mr. Sanders blitzed through Idaho, Utah and Arizona ahead of crucial nominating contests in those states on Tuesday. Facing a deep deficit in the race for delegates after losses in five states this week, he continued to hammer away at his core messages on campaign finance and Wall Street reform while trying to seize the mantle of electability from Hillary Clinton.

“Let me say a word to you about my good friend Donald Trump,” Mr. Sanders said at a rally before more than 3,000 people at a high school gym in Idaho Falls. “Just kidding, he’s not my good friend. In fact, I never even went to one of his weddings.”

Despite the veiled jab at Mrs. Clinton, who did attend Mr. Trump’s third wedding, Mr. Sanders directed most of his fire at the leading Republican candidate. He said he was “making an exception” to his promise not to campaign negatively, saying it was a necessary evil because of the gravity of Mr. Trump’s rise.

“The truth is that Donald Trump is a pathological liar,” Mr. Sanders said, spending several minutes discussing Mr. Trump’s record of bending the truth. “People can disagree about ideas, but you cannot have a president who the American people cannot trust when he speaks.”

Mr. Sanders pointed to several polls that show him as the stronger candidate to take on Mr. Trump, but he ignored the more daunting numbers facing him in the near term. He trails Mrs. Clinton by more than 300 delegates, and although his campaign says friendlier terrain is ahead, state polls of Democrats do not indicate that the race is likely to shift in his favor.

The Sanders team said Friday that it has received more than 150,000 donations in the past three days and insists that this is merely the midpoint in a long contest that will end in June. Still, many political analysts say the campaign is kidding itself.

“Hope is a difficult thing to extinguish, particularly when it’s well funded,” said Steve McMahon, a Democratic political consultant with Purple Strategies. “But keeping hope alive is different than keeping a campaign alive because this is ultimately about winning the most delegates, and it’s nearly impossible to see a path for Sanders to pass Clinton in delegates.”

Putting the long odds aside, Mr. Sanders has more rallies scheduled this weekend in Phoenix and in Boise, Idaho, and he is firing up his supporters by hitting local issues and throwing red meat in new directions.

On Thursday night, he focused on immigration at an event in Arizona and assailed Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County — one of the state’s most contentious political figures — as being an “un-American” bully.

Mr. Sanders was introduced at the rally by Katherine Figueroa Bueno, a teenage immigration activist who, at the age of 9, saw her parents being detained on television in a workplace raid led by Sheriff Arpaio, who backs Mr. Trump.

“Arpaio took away my childhood because I had to grow up from one week to another,” she said. “I am one of millions of other kids that are left behind.”

“I want all deportations to stop — that’s why we need Bernie Sanders to be our president,” she said.

Mr. Sanders vowed to prevent others from experiencing what Ms. Figueroa Bueno did.

“It’s easy for bullies like Sheriff Arpaio to pick on people who have no power, but if I’m elected president, the president of the United States does have the power,” Mr. Sanders said. “Watch out, Joe!”

Mr. Sanders also called for an end to “systemic injustice” faced by Native Americans, a quarter of whom he said live in poverty. He said that young American Indians faced low graduation rates and high suicide rates, and that one Native American woman in three would be raped during her lifetime.

“The Native American people have been lied to, they have been cheated and negotiated treaties have been broken,” he said. “We owe the Native American people so, so much.”

That outreach came in stark contrast to Mr. Trump, who was asked by a Native American woman this week in Ohio if, as president, he would apologize to the group for wrongs that were committed by the United States over the years.

Mr. Trump expressed little sympathy.

“Well, I’ll certainly look into it,” he said. “I haven’t been big on apologizing, you do know that, right?

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